quite immovable, but our earth and sun and all the rest of the heavenly bodies movable; for the conclusions of sight are thus related.
Pena has noticed how astronomers, using the principles of optics, have by most laborious reasoning removed the Milky Way from the elementary universe, where Aristotle had placed it, into the highest region of the ether; but now, by the aid of the telescope lately invented, the very eyes of astronomers are conducted straight to a thorough survey of the substance of the Milky Way; and whoever enjoys this sight is compelled to confess that the Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of extremely small stars.
Again, up to this time the nature of nebulous stars had been entirely unknown; but if the telescope be directed to one of such nebulous balls, as Ptolemy calls them, it again shows, as in the case of the Milky Way, three or four very bright stars clustered very close together.
Again, who without this instrument would have believed that the number of the fixed stars was ten times, or perhaps twenty times, more than that which is given in Ptolemy's description of the fixed stars? And whence, pray, should we seek for conclusive evidence about the end or boundary of this visible
